In the Sewers of Lvov (22 page)

Paulina, in her wisdom, had stumbled on the solution. It was really Stefak’s drinking she had been concerned about. That was a different matter altogether. Socha was once again his calm, reassuring self.

‘Of course, I am always careful. But Stefak … Please don’t worry. I will look after him.’ The issue was forgotten and Socha continued with his visit, something he clearly enjoyed just as much as they did.

From time to time Socha would report his misgivings about Wroblewski’s heavy drinking, but that he had the miscreant under the closest supervision. One day he arrived on his own and
reported at great length and with much detail the latest of Stefak’s indiscretions. Rolling his eyes, glancing at Paulina for confirmation and shaking his head to great effect, he explained how easily the man could go astray.

‘It being Sunday I called round to see Stefak. But his wife told me he wasn’t at home. “Where was he?” I asked.

‘“In the bar, I think,” she said.

‘Well, I went straight round to the bar and there he was, sitting with his friends, drinking, chattering away.’

Poor Stefak, he must have wondered what had happened to him.

‘I went straight in and grabbed hold of him and marched him all the way home again. Then I lectured him about how careless he had been, drinking with these people. What if he had let something slip? But the worst of it was that he was sitting there with the wristwatch you gave him, Mr Chiger. Now where does a simple sewer worker get such a watch?’

Socha’s report, however embellished, had the desired affect. He was a man to be trusted. They were safe with Socha in control. But that Stefak, he’d have to be watched.

The winter months were filled with incidents, not many of which can be given particular dates. There was the occasion when Pawel slipped and fractured his leg, which caused everyone a great deal of anguish. Socha in particular. They apparently discussed whether Socha should take Pawel out and have him treated, but they ruled it out as being just too dangerous. They wondered if Socha might get some medicine from the pharmacy, perhaps a splint and some bandages, but this was vetoed as well, on the grounds that it might draw too much attention. In the end, Socha had to admit that they could do little for Pawel and just hope that the fracture would set perfectly with the meagre bandage they had provided. Which was precisely what happened. Chiger put it down to Pawel’s ‘youth and generally healthy state’.

But Pawel’s health was not always so robust. At one point he contracted an infection in his throat that led to him losing his voice. Again, there was no prospect of getting any medication and
once more there was serious concern that ‘he was very sick’. Socha sat down with Paulina while she nursed Pawel and asked, ‘What do you think will help him?’

Paulina wasn’t certain, but mentioned an old wives’ cure, raw eggs. Socha said no more and left soon afterwards. A few hours later:

We heard a noise. Someone was wriggling down the pipe towards us. My father got quite scared because he couldn’t imagine who would be coming. Then suddenly, I remember, his face appearing through the pipe. It was Socha beaming through clenched teeth, for in his mouth he was holding the ends of a handkerchief filled with fresh eggs. That was the sort of person he was …’

On another more serious occasion, the problem was Kristina. She had plunged into a deep state of ‘melancholy’, as Chiger described it. It was more than just a depression, it verged upon a state of catatonia. She stopped eating and talking and all she wanted to do was sleep. Otherwise she sat on her own, or in her mother’s arms and stared blankly off into the distance. It went on this way for almost a month, and as each day went by she grew weaker and weaker. She seemed to be dying.

Socha became quite distressed. He came to see her every day and worried constantly about her condition. One day he came on his own and took Krisia into a corner, away from the others.

He sat me on his lap and he began talking to me, quietly. He just told me stories and told me not to worry … ‘Someday soon, you will breathe the air and you will see the daylight. It won’t be long, you’ll be like the other children and you will see the daylight … I will help you, don’t worry. I am always with you and Pawel. I’m always with you …’

And he took me down the pipes, to a place where I could see daylight – probably a manhole – and he picked me up and held me up to the light and he said, breath the air and look! See the daylight…

I think it was soon after that I began, slowly, to behave normally again. I started to talk and react and eat again … It was Socha who did it.

Apart from the illnesses that they were constantly prey to, there were other, less obvious hazards they had to cope with. One day Margulies and Berestycki were off on a journey to fetch water. They were passing beneath the corner of Czarniecklego and Ruska Streets, near the bottom of the Wysoki Zamek. The streets above, being under two or three feet of snow, were regularly cleared and much of it was swept down the hill and piled up around Czarnicklego Street. Once this had been done, large chutes in the street were opened and the snow simply shovelled down into the sewers.

This had all been done without Margulies and Berestycki having been alerted. They had made their way some distance down one of the large elliptical tunnels and along the way they remarked to each other at how little water was flowing around their feet. In fact, hardly any at all. Then they heard a strange noise up ahead of them.

‘Jacob, something is wrong,’ Margulies said. ‘Can you hear that noise?’ It was a deep, dark rumbling – like a constantly erupting explosion. And it was getting louder. The snow had been dumped into the tunnel and had completely blocked it up. The pressure of the water behind it had begun to melt the snow and now it was beginning to shift down the tunnel towards them.

The two of them turned and began to run in the opposite direction. The noise behind them became deafeningly loud and seemed almost upon them. Ahead of them off to the left they spied a branch tunnel, which they leapt into. Just as they got there they had enough time to turn and see a filthy grey wall of ice and mud thunder past the opening. According to Margulies: ‘It was a mountain of snow, moving like a torpedo. Just like a torpedo it was. We could not have survived in its path.’

In the midst of the gloom, there was one bright moment which probably gave cause for another of Socha’s little celebrations. Throughout 1943 the Soviet armies in the Ukraine had won victory after victory, pushing the Germans from Kiev, the Kerch peninsula, the Crimea and back towards the Polish border. By the middle of January, Socha would have been able to report that on
the tenth of the month the Red Army had taken the Polish town of Lyudvipol, about twenty kilometres inside the border. Of course, at that stage they had no idea it referred to the pre-1939 border, which had become nothing more than an historical remnant. The Allies had agreed at the Tehran Conference to redraw the Polish borders, ceding great tracts of pre-war Polish territory to the Soviet Union. Doubtless Socha and his companions had toasted the beginning of Poland’s liberation, unaware that the Soviet armies of the Ukraine were in fact liberating what would become Soviet territory.

Despite these little scraps of news, January was a month of unremitting depression for it was then that the day they had been dreading finally came upon them. They had run out of money and somehow had to admit this fact to Socha. Although they knew that Socha was aware of this inevitability, it made everyone terribly nervous. As Chiger recalled, it was one of those harsh realities that simply could not be ignored. They unanimously agreed that it should be Paulina who broke the news.

‘Socha had a very deep respect for her,’ Chiger noted.

So later in the morning, once Socha had delivered the provisions, Chiger ushered the others out of the way while Paulina whispered to Socha that she wanted to discuss a most serious matter.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Just as you predicted, we have no more money.’

‘What completely finished? Everybody?’

It was something the two of them had dreaded. It would mark the end of their relationship. Wroblewski and Kowalow had been adamant, it would be the finish.

‘Well, it’s very sad. You know we will have to stop coming.’

‘As you like,’ Paulina pronounced, as hard as she could. ‘As you like. We are not coming out into the street. Whether we live or not, we’re staying here.’

It was difficult for them to imagine, as he slipped down the Seventy, that his farewell had been the last they would hear. They tried to concentrate their minds upon contingency plans, foraging in the street, stealing from the market – anything that might get
them through. Despite news of the Red Army’s victories, they realized they were still some months away from salvation.

The following morning they woke and went about their normal routine. They had some three or four days worth of bread in the bucket slung from the roof and there were still plenty of potatoes. The coffee would run out in about a week and the little condiments – salt, pepper, sugar – might last another fortnight. It was not completely hopeless, but they were unable to plan very far into the future.

Then, as they sat there sipping their coffees and nudging the same problem back and forth, there came the familiar shuffles from the other end of the Seventy. They all gathered round the opening to see who it might be. First a bag was pushed through, then another – they were Socha’s. Then Socha himself emerged and stood there beaming from ear to ear. Amidst their dumb incomprehension, he handed over a few more kilos of bread and then sat down to share some coffee. Nothing seemed to have changed, except that of course he had come without Wroblewski and Kowalow.

‘The others wouldn’t come. They won’t work for nothing.’ They all stood around him, their eyes wide with expectation. ‘But … I told them that I’d go on until the job was finished. I told them I wouldn’t back out.’

‘But we have no money …’

‘I will go on until the job is finished.’

‘And the others …?’

‘Stefak’s out and Kowalow …’ He told them of a conversation he’d had with his foreman. It seemed that Kowalow had been concerned for his own skin. If the Jews had crawled out into the street in desperation and were captured they might tell the Germans about the help they’d been getting from three sewer workers.

‘Kowalow said we should just poison the lot of you. Give you strychnine somehow. I told him whatever he thought, I must continue. The children must survive.’

All their words of gratitude could not properly express their true feelings. What had happened seemed miraculous. The
following day he returned again with more bread and on the third day, Stefak too crawled through the pipe.

‘I changed his mind for him! He’s still with us!’ Socha declared to his audience. Clearly, Socha saw the group as a great responsibility – a kind of mission. But Wroblewski? Perhaps Socha also had hidden evangelical powers.

As Paulina said, ‘I began to think he had been sent by God. He was so honourable.’ Even Kowalow eventually resumed his responsibilities, standing guard at the open manhole.

‘Do what you like …’ was all he was reported as saying.

On the Friday of that week, Socha established a small charade, which was to be re-enacted on the same day thereafter. Fridays had always been the day Chiger paid Socha his ‘wages’. On this occasion, soon after he had entered the chamber, Socha somehow contrived to slip Chiger a roll of money.

‘You’ll give it to me for the week just as before. When I am about to leave.’

Paulina is certain this was done in order to save Chiger embarrassment: ‘He didn’t want anything to appear to have changed.’ But it also seems possible that this elaborate ruse was for the benefit of Wroblewski and Kowalow, who might have been labouring under the impression that their Jews had found more money. At any rate, Socha’s answer to all the doubts was always the same.

‘This is my decision.’

The winter weather did nothing to impede the Soviet army’s momentum. By the end of January they had recaptured Novgorod in the north and re-opened the Moscow-Leningrad railway line. By February the Red Air Force had begun bombing Helsinki, and had crossed the Estonian frontier. While down in their part of the world, the 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Armies had linked up in the southern Ukraine, trapping ten German divisions.

Socha reported every scrap of news from the war that he could glean. Chiger relished this intelligence and plotted each development on a map that had been published in one of the underground newspapers. Then he would spend hours poring over his papers like an old campaigner, before predicting the Soviet’s next move. All news of German defeats gave everyone great heart, for each one brought the date of their liberation closer. The question that lingered constantly in the air was, when? For how much longer could they survive in the basin? How long could Socha maintain their security? How long before they all collapsed from the pain in their backs that had developed from constantly having to be stooped over? By the beginning of February they had been underground for eight months.

It was impossible to answer. The Soviet advances might run out of steam, the Germans might counter-attack, the war might turn again. All the possibilities were discussed and debated at great length, particularly by Chiger and there developed the general impression that it would be over very soon. This singular thought carried them through the darkest months of the winter when the ground had hardened and the pipes they had to crawl
through were as cold as ice, when massive blocks of ice floated down the Peltwa and avalanches of snow descended through the manholes above.

During that winter, conditions on the street were harder than anything in living memory. Most of the coal had been commandeered and serious food shortages soon meant that the population was living on starvation rations. The streets were filled with the homeless who had come in from the countryside to find shelter and avoid starvation. Beggars stood in every street and gathered like packs of dogs around rubbish heaps outside the large military establishments – the only place where food in any quantity was always in constant supply.